What is it about Surrey that makes its housewives hanker after romance?

Laura Tandridge tossed her long, blonde locks over her demure face and bookish spectacles. But soon the young librarian’s stomach tightened and her heart pounded as she glanced up and glimpsed the rugged, sardonic billionaire Leandro Carrera Marquez march into the West Byfleet council lending library. Could the polo-playing olive oil magnate really be sojourning in Surrey and looking for some romantic fiction to borrow?

Well, he had come to the right place.

Figures published this week suggest that leafy, suburban Surrey, the county of George Eliot, PG Wodehouse, EM Forster and Arthur Conan Doyle, is Britain’s capital for erotic fiction.

The residents of Woking and Guildford may appear to be interested in the derring-do exploits of Andy McNab or the jolly japes found in Miranda Hart’s autobiography, but these are just a front. Hidden behind the dust jackets of the latest misery memoir, you will find tales of secretaries lashed to their desks and Victorian aristocrats with snarling lips and too-tight breeches.

Of course, in these digital days, there is no need to hide your saucy tastes behind another work of literature. You can download an ebook safe in the knowledge that the person at the next-door café table is also devouring some light sadomasochism. You can both pretend you are reading Bleak House.

Surrey County Council’s libraries enjoyed a surge in the number of downloaded ebooks last year, up 3,616 copies to 19,847 – an impressive number, considering the most popular ereader device, the Kindle, is not compatible with library ebooks. Kindle’s owner, Amazon, would you prefer to buy its books.

And the most popular title was At the Argentinean Billionaire’s Bidding by India Grey, followed by Bedded by the Greek Billionaire by Kate Walker, both of which should be classified as fantasy rather than erotic fiction: you are as likely to find a billionaire in Greece or Argentina, in these economic times, as a well-crafted sentence in EL James.

The Argentinean one features the young Tamsin Calthorpe falling for Alejandro D’Arienzo, who has gold-flecked eyes and taut, bronze sweat-sheened skin. There is a lot of heaving and panting.

And this is the noise you can hear emanating from the libraries of Esher and Caterham Hill. What is about Surrey and sweaty billionaires?

Chrissie Walters, who works at Paydens, the bookshop in Oxted, said: “I have to say I was absolutely bowled over at how well 50 Shades of Grey did down here. I thought our customers were too classy, but all sorts bought it.”

Last August, Surrey’s libraries accounted for an estimated 20 per cent of all nationwide loans of EL James’s explicit trilogy. Helen Leech, in charge of digital services at Surrey’s libraries, points out that many mainstream publishers, protective of their dwindling profits, have refused (as Amazon has done) to sell ebooks to public libraries. The most enlightened publisher, however, is Harlequin, whose sister company, Mills & Boon, is headquartered in Richmond, Surrey. This perhaps explains the strange preponderance for billionaires and diamonds in the top ten most loaned ebooks.

Ms Walters has a theory as to why the females of Frimley Green are lapping up this sort of erotica. “Obviously they need a bit of excitement, especially during this recession. Life is tough right now, and these books are easy reading, not too deep.”

This is true across the country. But there are certain aspects of Surrey that make it ripe for tales of bondage-loving billionaires. For starters, it is the richest corner of Britain, with more multi-millionaires than any other area outside London. It is also the “housewife capital” of the country, with more economically inactive women of working age than any other county. The doyennes of Dorking have time on their hands while their husbands beaver away in the City.

Annie Roberts, a mother of two who admits to reading the 50 Shades trilogy and to liking it (“All those who deny it are like those who claim they never inhaled”, she says) believes escapism is the reason for their popularity. “Most of my Surrey friends had fairly exciting university days and full twenties, but are now settling down and trying to juggle families. Something has to give, and sometimes that is an eventful sex life. Maybe all those books make up for it.”

Surrey, a land of golf clubs, temperate climes and economic wealth. But also full of women dreaming of being swept off their feet by a snarling, spanking billionaire.